A pop up obsession

To many people pop up books might be a novelty item destined to break and be thrown away, but to Judith Sarto they're objects of wonder and ingenuity with the potential to engage in ways 'flat books' never can.

Judith's first pop up purchase was a Star Wars book she bought for her son over 30 years ago when the first movie came out.

From there she started buying all kinds of pop up books, quickly discovering they're not just for kids, although in her work as a school teacher she's often found pop up books to be much more engaging when trying to capture the interest of young children.

In her collection of many thousands of books you'll find a pop up for almost everything - medical books, classic stories, books about music, architectural pieces, and plenty of abstract books which are very much about celebrating and showing off the engineering and mechanics of the art form.

To demonstrate, Judith holds up '600 black spots' by David Carter - the first page of which fans out as you open the cover before subsequent pages unfold to reveal some extremely precisely constructed three dimensional shapes.

Even the simplest pop up book requires more work to produce than a normal book - apparently in the 1960s, a chap called Waldo H Hunt was responsible for bringing pop up books back into popularity and used to use a production line where rows of people would fold the paper along the correct lines to make the books unfold properly.

Today much of that assembly happens in China but is still done by hand.

While some of the most impressive pop up books might've been produced in more recent years, the art form has been around for a very long time with many documented examples of early pop up books, although they were more along the lines of lifting a flap to reveal something as opposed to an intricate system operating when pages are opened.

Judith regularly gives talks about her collection and is happy to show it to people. On the 31st of July she'll be doing two presentations at the History Rooms in Derrinallum, one at 10am and another at 2pm. Bookings are essential on 0400 677 843.

She also suggests they're not as fragile as you might think - often a new pop up book just needs to be gently 'worn in' by loosening up the levers and flaps to make sure it will have a long and well read life.